The JOBS Bill

By Fred Wilson:
This past Thursday, the Senate voted 73-26 to approve its version of the JOBS bill. The House had previously approved a similar bill and the process will now go back to the House to come up with a modified bill that can be approved by both the House and Senate. I hope they make quick work of that and present the bill for signature to Obama who has committed to sign it. I suspect most readers of this blog know a bit about this bill. The three provisions that are most meaningful are the crowdfunding provision, the increase in shareholder ceiling for private companies from 500 to 2,000, and the "sub $1bn revenue IPO" provision that we discussed previously here at AVC. I had held off blogging about the crowdfunding provision because frankly I had some reservations that I had privately discussed with friends, colleagues, and elected officials. I didComplete Story »

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A bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline was defeated in the Senate on Tuesday. The Senate voted 59-41 putting the bill one vote shy of the 60 it needed to reach the White House. President Barack Obama did not support the bill to approve the pipeline, which would have carried petroleum from Canada's oil sands to the Gulf Coast.

“Can I really make money with equity crowdfunding? I mean, does this even make sense for someone like me? I’m not a ‘professional’ investor.”
We’ve been getting this question a lot lately. Ever since we began talking about this massive change in securities laws – known as the JOBS Act – hundreds of readers have been asking different versions of this same question.

Fred Wilson submits:
The WSJ says that the SEC is reviewing the rules under which privately held companies raise capital and are subject to securities regulation. They quote the SEC Chair Mary Schapiro as saying:

The New York Times has an instructive account, Inside the Race to Rescue a Health Care Site, and Obama, of the scrambling in the Administration to deal with the beyond-redeption-by-the-power-of-spin disaster of the Healthcare.gov launch.

The deal is the largest made by Mayer since she took the helm at Yahoo last July, and she described the acquisition as a “unique opportunity” adding: ”On many levels, Tumblr and Yahoo couldn’t be more different, but at the same time, they couldn’t be more complementary.”
David Karp, 26, who owns 25 per cent of the privately-owned company he co-founded with Marco Arment in 2007, said he was “elated” to have the support of Yahoo and will continue as chief executive officer of Tumblr.